The release of the 200-page McCullough Report has exposed the depth of politically motivated policing that exists in the PSNI. Spying, lying and methods illegal even by the standards of capitalist law are described as “widespread or systemic” in this rotten police force.
The report found 21 instances of illegal use of journalists’ communications data to identify their sources between 2011 and 2015. This is already more than double to what the PSNI was previously forced to admit, and we have no doubt it is still only the tip of the iceberg.
Make no mistake: the name may have changed, and a coat of bottle-green paint may have freshened the uniform – but the PSNI remains what it always was: a sectarian police force, enforcing imperialist rule in the North, serving the interests of the ruling class, and defending its own.
The McCullough report was commissioned by the chief constable of the PSNI following legal action from Barry McCaffery – a journalist victim of illegal searches by the PSNI for his role in producing, together with Trevor Birney, a documentary on the Loughinisland/World Cup massacre.
The documentary looked at how the RUC handled the murders of six catholics by the UVF loyalist paramilitary group. The shadow of RUC collusion hangs over this sectarian atrocity. So not only has the RUC criminally ‘mishandled’ the investigation (to cover their tracks), but decades later the PSNI even arrested the two journalists – using illegal spying – for the ‘crime’ of exposing the truth!
The report also revealed a number of illegal attempts made against solicitors to obtain their data. This includes members of the legal team representing Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton, jailed for allegedly shooting a PSNI officer in 2009 on evidence that according to one of the wrongly imprisoned Guildford Four was “inconclusive, contradictory and in places discredited”.
To be sure, this report in many ways is not much more than an internal review. And despite the rot it exposes, it goes to extreme lengths in order to excuse and justify the PSNI. The true scale of political policing, lying, and spying is undoubtedly far greater than even this report admits.
The introduction of a ‘new’ police force to replace the hated RUC was an integral part of the Good Friday Agreement. But like with any other point of the agreement, on the back of the continued crisis of the Six Counties statelet, the PSNI is now itself in crisis and mired in scandals.
The GFA did not solve the sectarianism of the North – it merely papered over the cracks of a fundamentally sectarian state. The only genuine solution lies in a struggle against imperialism and capitalism. To do away with the hated institutions of British imperialism, to overthrow the capitalist regime in the South, and to fight for an Ireland that is not a launch pad for British, American or European imperialism.
That is, to fight for a Socialist United Ireland.
